WCR This Week

For more than 50 years in the service of the Gospel of our Lord, the Western Catholic Reporter has provided news and commentary to the People of God in this archdiocese and beyond. Thanks to the professionalism and dedication of Glen Argan and his staff, the paper has developed a rich legacy of journalistic excellence, recognized through many industry awards.

The Church is more, much more, than a doctrine or a document. The Church has the life of a community coursing through its veins. For 51 years, the Western Catholic Reporter chronicled the life of the local Church, the Canadian Church and the global Church. Its vocation was to have the smell of the sheep of which Pope Francis speaks so often.

The close of the Western Catholic Reporter fills my heart with sorrow. The paper means a lot to me, but my feelings reach beyond personal considerations. Time, as is often said, marches on. And with different eras come different sets of practicalities and different visions.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Pasting a happy face over the closure of the Western Catholic Reporter is not in my repertoire. I wish the Edmonton Archdiocese all the best in its new communications ventures; I hope it develops effective means of evangelization and of challenging our culture. It's a culture that puts too much emphasis on things and not enough on the human person raised to glory by Jesus Christ.

I've always have had a dickens of a time saying goodbye. But here goes. My past 15 years here at the WCR have been good ones, a time when the stories we ran opened hearts, nourished people's faith. It was an unlikely place for me to come to after my years in the secular press. I won national awards there and enjoyed my profession.

Shortly after I graduated from the University of Alberta with a bachelor's degree in translation, I moved to Japan as part of a government program to have native speakers help teach English to Japanese students. One of the things that hits you hardest when living in a foreign country is the importance of communication. People everywhere have a strong desire to connect to each other, to share joys, to share pains, to share news and opinions, to pass thoughts and feelings from one soul to another.

After 24 years I almost feel like this story should start like an episode of Star Wars. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . .". Working 24 years for the Western Catholic Reporter has been both an honour and a privilege for me. I've served three bishops, seen a number of reporters come and go, and for me the best was working for only one editor - Glen Argan. His leadership has allowed me to grow and use the skills I acquired.

I was 18 and had just finished my first year of a two-year journalism program at what was then Grant MacEwan Community College. I hadn't lined up a summer job, so I was doing what most teenagers do - sleeping in till noon. The phone rang, and Mom came in to wake me up and tell me it was Vic Misutka, editor of the Western Catholic Reporter, asking if I'd be interested in working there for the summer. Our families belonged to the same parish, so he must have heard somehow about my field of study, and he was generous enough to give me a chance.

VATICAN CITY - Religions can play an important role in protecting the environment and defending human rights in their countries, their communities and their schools, Pope Francis said. "I believe we are still at a nursery-school level in this. That is, in incorporating responsibility not only as a subject, but as (a matter of) conscience as part of holistic education," the pope said Sept. 8.